Bookworm

CONGRATULATIONS to Kansas retired academic Donald Worster, whose flying visits to Scotland prove more lucrative than any other writer's I can think of. Yesterday, in the Scottish Arts Council's last-ever shindig, his biography of John Muir, A Passion for Nature, was praised to the skies, repositioning Muir as a new icon for 21st century Scotland, a prophet of both green politics and environmentalism. More to the point, he was also presented with a 25,000 cheque as the winner of the (deep breath) Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year.

At least Worster – who flew in on Thursday from attending a conference in Canada to pick up the award at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose – will be spending some time in Scotland before heading back to the Sunflower State.

The last time he was here, for the Saltire Awards on St Andrew's Day last year, he picked up a 1,500 cheque for his book and managed to just effortless charm to strangers (Bookworm was one) but a speech of real eloquence – all despite the fact that he was only in Edinburgh for 24 hours and the jetlag involved would have felled a lesser man.

FOUND IN TRANSLATION

EVER wondered why the Swiss are a) so much more civilised than us and b) so much better at languages? After talking to Diccon Bewes, manager of the Staufacher English Bookshop in Berne, all becomes much clearer.

Suppose the new Philip Roth is published in England and America in May. Swiss bookshops will sell a few copies. Then it is translated into German in (let's say) October, and the reviews start to appear in the German newspapers.

That's when, he says, the Swiss will start reading Roth. Of course they will, you think: they'll be reading Roth in German. No, says Diccon, some might: but that's when the sales of Roth in English take off. In the hills and valleys of the cantons, those ultra-bright Swiss – reading in, what is, for many of them, their fourth language, won't trust the translation but determinedly set out to read Roth in the original. And this phenomenon – which took him by surprise at first – applies not just to Roth, but to all major authors in translation.

Can you imagine such a thing ever happening in Scotland? Ever?

SOHO NIGHTS IN EDINBURGH

WHAT with the launch of the Edinburgh International Book Festival programme on the day the Borders Book Festival starts and the day after the first stars have walked up the Edinburgh International Film Festival's red carpet, smaller festivals could all too easily get crowded out.

A quick plug then for Edinburgh's West Port Book Festival, which opens for business on Thursday next week in what its organisers claim to be "Edinburgh's Soho" with a reading from Douglas Dunn, and ends up with a party on Sunday night at the Roxy Art House. Full details of the festival – which film festival director Hannah McGill says is her favourite one in the city (apart from her own, obviously) on westportbookfestival.org